RSS Feed Consistency
RSS Feed Icon Consistency
Posted by Adam Hayes
RSS feeds are becoming more consistent from browser to browser (Firefox and Internet Explorer) and should make RSS marketing in the future easier than ever before.
Every internet marketer out there should be standing up and doing the happy dance. RSS has won another victory through Microsoft adopting Firefox's RSS feed icon to integrate into their newest Window's platform.
It is nice to see that Microsoft is playing nice with fellow competitor Firefox to make things easier for everyone.
We all agreed that it's in the user's best interest to have one common icon to represent RSS and RSS-related features in a browser... I'm excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox. John and Chris were very enthusiastic about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.
Just the other day I was commenting on this on Matt Cutt's blog and received this comment back from another commentor:
Geeks understand RSS. 95% of the rest of folks don’t even know what it is or how to work with it.
Really. Go to a cafe (no, not an internet cafe) and ask 10 random people if they use RSS. You’ll get blank stares. My sister doesn’t use RSS. Neither of my parents use RSS. When they want something, they’ll Google for it, or they’ll put their e-mail address into a form and hit SUBMIT.
I mean, do you realize just HOW geeky RSS is? Hmm… okay, so I'm reading this Web page and I want to “subscribe”. How do I do that? Right-clicking on an XML icon, copying the URL, and pasting it somewhere else… does that sound intuitive to you? Or maybe it's an RSS icon? Or a text “subscribe” link that looks like gibberish when you click on it? How much patience do you think non-geeks have just to read YOUR marketing material, er, content?
Hopefully having a more consistent user interface will allow people like this commentor's mother or sister to use RSS.
I for one love RSS. RSS makes my life easier by delivering the content I want directly to me without the need of "signing up" or giving out my email address. I am glad to see that Microsoft is recognizing its importance and hopefully through embracing RSS it will bring the power of RSS into mainstream technology and make it as prevalent as email is today.
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